Mary Bickerson has admired President Kennedy for as long as she can remember. Like millions of other people, not just in the United States but throughout the world, she became caught up in the Camelot atmosphere of the young President, his attractive wife and their young children. During the spate of television documentaries last November marking the 40th anniversary of his assassination in Dallas, Texas, a mention was made that the Kennedy Half Dollar coin series was rushed through Congress and the first such coins bearing a likeness of the late President went into circulation in 1964. She remembered that the announcer said the Kennedy half dollar series has lasted longer than any other half dollar series in U.S. history.
She was surprised to hear this: “I had no idea they were still making Kennedy half dollars,” she told this writer. “I haven’t gotten any in change, or seen anybody spend one in heaven knows how many years. In fact, I don’t ever really recall seeing them being used as change at stores.”
If the TV show was correct, the Monmouth County, New Jersey woman decided, she would like to get some “representing the various year dates. I’m not a coin collector so I did what came naturally; I visited my bank the next day and asked if they had any Kennedy half dollars.
“Lo and behold, the teller promptly handed me a half dozen or so from her coin tray! I was so surprised, and told her I hadn’t seen any in years. The teller told me that wasn’t unusual since nobody really used them or the small ‘golden’ dollar coins (Sacagawea dollars) either. But every so often somebody would bring a few into the bank an exchange them for paper money.”
Mary says she doesn’t recall exactly which dates she got at that first visit or in various trips which followed. “I kept them all. I sorted one of each date and slipped them into a clear plastic 35mm slide page and put the duplicates in a zip lock bag.” She says that somewhere along the way she found out about “the difference between those little P and D (mint) marks. From late November thru early February she visited the same bank and others in her area to gather as many Kennedy halves as she could.
“It was all starting to become a great effort for a measly return. By this time I had several tellers at four area banks putting Kennedy halves aside for me but despite that I hadn’t even collected a hundred coins. I think there were 13 one-of-each-date and the rest were duplicates. It was slow going and the dates I had were scattered all over the place from the 1960s through the late 1990s.”
She said one of the tellers told her they could order $500 boxes of rolled and wrapped half dollars for her to take home and go through, but for some reason the idea just didn’t appeal to her at the time. For one thing, she correctly figured that a $500 box of half dollars, containing 1,000 coins, would be heavy (Editor’s note: they actually weigh 30 lbs.) and in a giddy moment she had visions of rows and rows of zip lock bags filled with coins cluttering up the top of her bedroom dresser.
Then, when she and her husband got a buyer for their computer-related import business and sold it in early March, Mary suddenly had a considerable amount of disposable income. “We did the usual traditional things and invested the sale money in some stocks, bought another car and put the rest in savings.
But then she got an inspiration: why just keep an assorted and relatively handful of Kennedy half dollars? Why not try to assemble one coin of each date? I remembered what the teller had said about ordering boxes. It occurred to me that maybe getting boxes of half dollars, a lot of boxes at one time would take the drudgery out of what was originally a November passion to get some Kennedy half dollars as keepsake mementoes.
“I told my husband that I wanted to take $10,000 of the sale money and get half dollars. He looked at me as if I had just told him I wanted to buy the Empire State Building, but after explaining why I wanted to do it and assuring him that I wasn’t going to loose any money because this wasn’t an investment and we would always have our money in our hands, he reluctantly agreed.
“Well I asked the bank to get me $10,000 in half dollars. That’s 20 boxes, about 600 lbs. A week later, by now it was mid-May, the bank called to say the coins were in so my husband took a hand truck we had for moving cartons in our business and went to the bank in our van.”
Mary says they stacked the boxes in their garage and she lugged them up a flight of stairs one at a time as she went through them. I did it right on the kitchen table. All my husband asked at first is that I had the kitchen back to normal each day in time for dinner.” She added she was surprised at how quickly the paper roll wrappers built up. “They were annoying. It was nearly impossible to work neatly with them. They curl up and quickly fill a trash bag.” Mary did not cut-up or discard the half dollar boxes. “I just saved them and put the coins I had gone through back in them.”
Mary soon discovered that besides the P and D mint marks she was also finding some with S mint marks. I finally got around to visiting an area coin shop, and got a quick education, which led me to other coin shops in the area and quite a bit of time searching the Internet.”
To bone up on coins a bit, she purchased a Yeoman’s Redbook (price guide); Photograde (a grading guide)and some Whitman half dollar folders. At a Barnes & Noble she picked up a copy of Coinage magazine. Mary says she had noticed that some of her half dollars “looked a little different” from the rest. “That’s when I learned that those dated 1964 were all silver and from 1965-1970 those were part silver, and all these dates were worth more than their ‘face value.’ And the S mint marked coins were proofs. I went through the original zip lock bag from that very first trip and found three of the silver coins from the 1960s. One was an all silver 1964.
Armed with this recently acquired numismatic education she went back and researched the boxes she had already culled through. She found more than a dozen 40% silver.
I found the Photograde book absolutely fascinating and realized that the grade of coins shown there was reflected in the Redbook prices. But all along I had been replacing any worn, scratched or nicked half dollars that I had originally put aside with better condition coins as I found them, so I did something smart on my own because I wanted to assemble the best looking collection I could from these bank boxes.”
That same week, while still facing a high stack of unopened boxes to go through from her first $10,000 lot, Mary contacted the same bank and two others she had accounts with and asked them each to order $10,000. “I wanted to make it an even $50,000 but my husband blew a fuse, so I ended up with a total of $40,000, the original $10,000 and the new stuff.. Our garage resembled Fort Knox with all the coin boxes: the many yet to be opened boxes on the left side, and those already searched on the left.”
By early August Mary had gone through every one of the 80 boxes and had actually assembled the entire series of Kennedy Halves in EF to AU Business Strikes and all of the 40% S proofs (found in circulation) and was displaying them in three black Capital Plastic holders. She found two silver clad S proofs: both 1976 bicentennials. But, understandably, she didn’t find any silver proofs minted 1992 to date. “These holders come in white or black. I think these coins really jump out at you with the black background. If you remove the top middle screw you can hang them on a thin nail. I’m going to do that, probably in the Family Room, but I haven’t decided yet,” she said
How do the proof coins she found get into circulation? Coin dealer Tom Culhane of The Elusive Spondulix in Union, NJ, told this writer that some of these coins are snapped out of their holders by house burglars. Others find their way into the mainstream by children and young adults you received proof sets as gifts but spent the coins to purchase CDs or other items.
And finding 40% or 90% silver halves in bank rolls is not uncommon, he notes. “People die and their heirs come across some rolls or tubes of coins the departed had put aside. In many cases they have no idea what they are holding so they either spend them or take the coins to their bank.”
Without giving a figure Mary said she and her husband (who got into the coin searching routine with her when she told him that the “real” silver coins were worth more than three times their face value) had put aside “a good number of silver coins, both kinds.”
From her new-found knowledge Mary told me that even though 1970D, 1987 P and D Kennedy’s were only made for Mint sets, she had found two of the former and 3 of the later in her searching.
“The most difficult coin for me to find was a really nice 1974D. That year in general didn’t show up too often, but I’d have to say that to get one in AU was really difficult. Getting all the clad proofs was a bonus and surprise,” she thought for a moment, and added, “So was the error coin with the missing letters and date and Stone Mountain Commemorative. I had no idea what the commemorative was. I had never seen one. But I found a picture of it in the coin book (the Redbook).
And what did she do about those missing silver S proofs from 1993 on? Would she buy them?
“No way, this set is strictly a set of half dollars made for general circulation. I didn’t bother looking for any of those coins with double dies, missing designer initials or the filled S mint mark of ’79, I think. I just put in some of those gold plated coins with the reverse side up in those spaces for now. Eventually I hope to find them. I began as saving some mementoes, but now it’s actually a complete collection of general circulation Kennedy halves. Again, the clad proofs are a bonus, and they filled a lot of holes!”
I was amused and impressed when she told me: “I think you could say the silver proofs are really Non Circulating Legal Tender (NCLT)”. It is truly amazing what lingo even a novice can pick up from reading a coin book!
